18.11.12

Israel and Palestine

In light of the recent escalation of tensions between Israel and Palestine, I felt it necessary to show that Palestine is not some sort of evil terrorist pseudo-state.

The State of Palestine is recognized by most South American, African, Eastern European, Middle Eastern, Asian and majority muslim countries. Countries coloured green recognize Palestine as a state.

Canada, the United States, the European Union and Japan classify the government of the State of Palestine, Hamas, as a terrorist organization. Ironic, considering that since 2000, Palestinians have killed fewer than 150 Israeli children, and Israelis have killed nearly 1500. 750 Israeli civilians have been killed, and about 4000 Palestinian civilians. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed as the target of or in the process of an assassination. About half of all Israeli casualties have occurred on their land, the other half in Palestine. More than 95% of Palestinian deaths have been in Palestine.

Hamas also spends more than half of its resources on welfare and other social issues, and less than 20% on military purposes.

Sources:

Israel is full of discrimination towards the people who have been living there for hundreds of years. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel published a report in 2007 showing that more than two thirds of Israeli teens viewed Arabs as less intelligent, uncultured and violent, while a third actually feared them and about half would not live in the same building or let their family have anything to do with arabs. A poll of Israeli high schoolers found that half of students did not believe that Arabs deserved the same rights as Israelis. Another poll found that more than a third of Israelis did not believe that Arabs deserved the right to vote.

Despite this, many western nations support Israel. A large reason for this may be due to the fact that Palestine was conquered by the British in the early 1900s. The Arab Palestinians were unhappy with this, revolting three times. In 1947, the British conquerors as well as the United Nations decided to partition Palestine into a Jewish State and an Arab State. Following the holocaust, anywhere from several hundred thousand to a million jews illegally immigrated to Palestine. These illegal immigrants were the reason for the partition, and despite still being a minority of around 30%, were given more land in the partition. Obviously, the Arabs refused. This sparked a civil war, and several hundred thousand Arabs had to flee their homes, compared to about ten thousand jews. Since the Arabs refused the partition plan, the United Nations viewed the Israelis in a better light and this bias has been retained to the present day, with polls showing that only 20% of americans favour Palestine.

Now, back to the very beginning of this post. So few western countries recognize Palestine as a state, yet Palestine has been shown time and time again to be the lesser evil. Recognize Palestine, countries of the world; recognize the people who have been there longer; the people who do not seek to displace over a million inhabitants of an area because of a perceived right to a land; the people who do not seek to remove voting rights for an entire race.